Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(4,813)
- Faculty Publications (537)
- January 2010
- Journal Article
A Choice Prediction Competition: Choices from Experience and from Description
By: Ido Erev, Eyal Ert, Alvin E. Roth, Ernan E. Haruvy, Stefan Herzog, Robin Hau, Ralph Hertwig, Terrence Steward, Robert West and Christian Lebiere
Erev, Ert, and Roth organized three choice prediction competitions focused on three related choice tasks: one-shot decisions from description (decisions under risk), one-shot decisions from experience, and repeated decisions from experience. Each competition was based... View Details
- 2010
- Chapter
A Contingency Theory of Leadership
By: Jay W. Lorsch
The idea of a contingency theory of leadership is not novel. In the 1960s several scholars conducted research and proposed such an approach arguing that the style of leadership that would be most effective depended upon the situation (Fiedler, Tannenbaum and Schmidt,... View Details
- 2010
- Article
Has the Shift to Stronger Intellectual Property Rights Promoted Technology Transfer, FDI, and Industrial Development?
By: Lee Branstetter, C. Fritz Foley and Kamal Saggi
This article reviews recent research conducted by the authors that finds that intellectual property rights reform increases technology transfers, foreign direct investment inflows, and industrial development. It also places the findings of this work in the broader... View Details
- 2010
- Article
Impact of Online Consumer Reviews on Sales: The Moderating Role of Product and Consumer Characteristics
By: Feng Zhu and Michael Zhang
This article examines how product and consumer characteristics moderate the influence of online consumer reviews on product sales using data from the video game industry. The findings indicate that online reviews are more influential for less popular games and games... View Details
- 2010
- Chapter
Leadership and History
Historians have written a lot about business leaders, especially successful ones. In fact, rags-to-riches stories have come to embody the philosophy of America itself, yet the term "business leadership" was rarely used until the early twentieth century. This chapter... View Details
- Article
Refined Configuration Results for Extremal Type II Lattices of Ranks 40 and 80
By: Noam D. Elkies and Scott Duke Kominers
We show that, if L is an extremal Type II lattice of rank 40 or 80, then L is generated by its vectors of norm min(L)+2. This sharpens earlier results of Ozeki, and the second author and Abel, which showed that such lattices L are generated by their vectors of norms... View Details
Keywords: Mathematical Methods
- 2010
- Article
The Strategic Use of Brand Biographies
By: Jill Avery, Neeru Paharia, Anat Keinan and Juliet Schor
We introduce the concept of a brand biography to describe an emerging trend in branding in which firms author a dynamic, historical account of the events that have shaped the brand over time. Using a particular type of brand biography, "the underdog," we empirically... View Details
Keywords: Marketing; Brands; Brand Management; Brand Building; Brand Positioning; Competitive Positioning; Marketing Strategy; Brands and Branding; Managerial Roles; Strategy; Product Positioning; Consumer Behavior; Biography; Success; Perception; Markets; Power and Influence; Consumer Products Industry; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Auto Industry; Fashion Industry; Food and Beverage Industry
- 2009
- Working Paper
Assess, Don't Assume, Part I: Etiquette and National Culture in Negotiation
When facing a cross-border negotiation, the standard preparatory assessments -- of the parties, their interests, their no-deal options, opportunities for and barriers to creating and claiming value, the most promising sequence and process design, etc. -- should be... View Details
- 2009
- Working Paper
Assess, Don't Assume, Part II: Negotiating Implications of Cross-Border Differences in Decision Making, Governance, and Political Economy
When facing a cross-border negotiation, the standard preparatory assessments—of the parties, their interests, their no-deal options, opportunities for and barriers to creating and claiming value, the most promising sequence and process design, etc.—should be... View Details
- Article
Management Accounting and Control: Lessons for and from the World's Tiniest Businesses
By: Srikant M. Datar, Marc J. Epstein and Kristi Yuthas
The article discusses skills microentrepreneurs need to manage and expand their businesses. After interviewing hundreds of microfinance clients around the globe, the authors were able to identify five tools drawn from management accounting where improved knowledge... View Details
- October 2009
- Article
Making Time Off Predictable—and Required
By: Leslie Perlow and Jessica L. Porter
People in professional services believe a 24/7 work ethic is essential for getting ahead—and so they work 60-plus hours a week and stay tethered to their BlackBerrys. This perpetuates a vicious cycle: Responsiveness breeds the need for more responsiveness. When people... View Details
- September 2009
- Article
A Detailed Analysis of the Reduction Mammaplasty Learning Curve: A Statistical Process Model for Approaching Surgical Performance Improvement
By: Matthew Carty MD, Rodney Chan, Robert S. Huckman, Daniel C. Snow and Dennis Orgill
Background: The increased focus on quality and efficiency improvement within academic surgery has met with variable success among plastic surgeons. Traditional surgical performance metrics, such as morbidity and mortality, are insufficient to improve the... View Details
- September 2009
- Article
Are You Having Trouble Keeping Your Operations Focused?
As a business broadens over time, it can lose the operational edge that led to its original success. Core strengths atrophy, efficiency or quality suffers, and sharper rivals close in to take advantage of the loss of focus. In his classic article "The Focused Factory"... View Details
- 2009
- Book
Leading for Equity: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Montgomery County Public Schools
By: Stacey M. Childress, Dennis Doyle and David A. Thomas
Leading for Equity tells the compelling story of the Montgomery County (Maryland) Public Schools and its transformation—in less than a decade—into a system committed to breaking the links between race and class and academic achievement. In chapters organized around six... View Details
- 2009
- Chapter
Organizational Design: Balancing Search and Stability in Strategic Decision Making
By: Jan Rivkin and Nicolaj Siggelkow
Managers often must make decisions that depend on decisions in other parts of the organization. These interactions create a network of interdependent choices and make strategizing difficult. In this chapter, the authors explore the intersection between organizing and... View Details
- May 2009
- Article
Authority versus Persuasion
This paper studies a manager's trade-off between using persuasion and using interpersonal authority to get an employee to 'do the right thing' from the manager's perspective (when the manager and employee disagree on the right course of action). It... View Details
- 2009
- Chapter
Small and Medium Firm Lending in Mexico: Lessons and Current Issues
By: Rodrigo Canales and Ramana Nanda
Mexico is often cited as one of the world's most entrepreneurial countries in terms of the percentage of its population that has started or is in the process of starting a business venture. Yet Mexico does not seem to be very friendly to entrepreneurs, as confirmed by... View Details
- May 2009
- Article
The Definitive Guide to Recruiting in Good Times and Bad
By: Claudio Fernández-Aráoz, Boris Groysberg and Nitin Nohria
This article includes a one-page preview that quickly summarizes the key ideas and provides an overview of how the concepts work in practice along with suggestions for further reading. Few companies are thinking about hiring right now, but that's a mistake. If history... View Details
- April 2009 (Revised May 2009)
- Case
Oprah Winfrey
By: Nancy F. Koehn, Erica Helms, Katherine Miller and Rachel Wilcox
The case explores the entrepreneurial journey of Oprah Winfrey, examining how she built an audience for one of the most successful television shows in history; how she created the company, Harpo Productions, that produces that show as well as other media offerings; how... View Details
- April 2009
- Article
How to Market in a Downturn
By: John A. Quelch and Katherine Jocz
This article includes a one-page preview that quickly summarizes the key ideas and provides an overview of how the concepts work in practice along with suggestions for further reading. Because no two recessions are exactly alike, marketers find themselves in poorly... View Details